Golden Cadillac Brings Back the 70s

The interior of Golden Cadillac pays homage to two recently vanished New York landmarks: the Lenox Lounge in Harlem and the Odessa Cafe in the East Village.

Ramsay de Give for The New York Times

By ROBERT SIMONSON

November 4, 2013

Over the past decade or so, mixologists have seemed to resurrect almost every significant drinking era in American history. Pre-Prohibition cocktails have been meticulously recreated. The aesthetic of the Prohibition-era speakeasy has been thoroughly explored. And “Mad Men” has inspired bars to plumb the hard-drinking days that followed World War II.

One period whose praises have not been sung, however, is the 1970s, generally considered the decade during which the cocktail craft went to die. Golden Cadillac, a new bar set to open this week in the East Village, is hoping to change that.

“Images of discos come to mind,” said Giuseppe Gonzalez, a bartender whose past posts include the cocktail bars Clover Club, Dutch Kills and Painkiller. “We’re going to try to make people think differently about the ‘70s.”

Mr. Gonzalez’s vision of that decade is all about the New York he grew up with. “The birth of punk music, birth of hip-hop,” he said. “Keith Haring moved here in 1978. Martin Scorsese made four films set in New York in the ‘70s. That’s what I wanted.”

While the drink list will not be limited to libations popular during the Me Decade, some of those frequently reviled refreshments will get their day in the sun: the Long Island Iced Tea, the Bloody Caesar (a Bloody Mary made with Clamato) and, of course, the Galliano-laced cocktail that provided the bar’s name. There will also be a Grasshopper, served as a hot beverage, and blender drinks.

“I want people to start thinking differently about what they think is a trashy drink,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

The menu, meanwhile, is inspired by Gourmet magazines from the 1970s. “We’re talking old things, and adding a new twist,” said Miguel Trinidad, the executive chef. There will be a hunter’s stew, tuna casserole, steak Diane and a knish fondue, with homemade knishes paired with a pot of melted cheese. “Like vintage cars, we’re bringing back vintage food,” Mr. Trinidad added. “A lot of things get lost, like tuna casserole.”

Mr. Gonzalez is a third-generation barman and grew up in saloons, the kind he described as “a little shady, with men in suits.” He believes the bartenders of those days deserve as much respect as their counterparts today. “You tell me that there were people who were barmen in the 1970s who didn’t care about their craft, I’ll tell you no. It was just a different world.”

For Golden Cadillac, his partners are Greg Boehm and James Tune. All three men hail from the city. Mr. Gonzalez was born in the Bronx. Mr. Tune, a former general manager at Pegu Club, is from Brooklyn. And Mr. Boehm, who owns Cocktail Kingdom, an online purveyor of cocktail wares and antique bar manuals, moved to Manhattan after attending college. Mr. Trinidad, too, is a New Yorker, who grew up on the Lower East Side (and was born in a New York taxi, as he tells it).

The interior, designed by Jeannette Kaczorowski of Crow Hill Design Studio, along with Fieldlines Architecture, pays homage to two recently vanished New York landmarks: the Lenox Lounge in Harlem and the Odessa Cafe in the East Village. “Jeanette said there were lots of layers in those bars,” Mr. Boehm said. “You started with Art Deco, and then it was built upon. Lots of oranges, burgundies and browns.” Another inspiration was the fictional Volpe Bar in Mr. Scorsese’s film “Mean Streets.”

“We wanted it to look like an actual place that existed in the ‘70s,” Mr. Tune said.